Immigration proposals

tommytwojags

tommytwojags

Well-known member
Some promising proposals announced by the government today to resolve this apparently insurmountable problem

- 700 new immigration staff to deal with movement of immigrants from France and to trace illegal people-smugglers.
- 50% increase in funding to deal with asylum applications
- Present £5.5m per day spent on hotel accommodation costs to be halved with more suitable accommodation at lower cost
- Double the number of case officers to result in day or weeks asylum processing instead of current months or years
-Tackling Albanian immigrants. 1/3 of all illegal immigrants are from Albania, a prosperous safe EU applicant country. To be tackled in conjunction with Albanian authorities.
- 150,000 backlog of asylum applications to be cleared by the end of 2023

Keir Starmer questions whether this time the pledges will actually be implemented. Let's hope they are because it's a shambles at the moment.
 
tommytwojags said:
Some promising proposals announced by the government today to resolve this apparently insurmountable problem

- 700 new immigration staff to deal with movement of immigrants from France and to trace illegal people-smugglers.
- 50% increase in funding to deal with asylum applications
- Present £5.5m per day spent on hotel accommodation costs to be halved with more suitable accommodation at lower cost
- Double the number of case officers to result in day or weeks asylum processing instead of current months or years
-Tackling Albanian immigrants. 1/3 of all illegal immigrants are from Albania, a prosperous safe EU applicant country. To be tackled in conjunction with Albanian authorities.
- 150,000 backlog of asylum applications to be cleared by the end of 2023

Keir Starmer questions whether this time the pledges will actually be implemented. Let's hope they are because it's a shambles at the moment.
Click to expand...
Categorising them all as Albanians doesn't quite work, as Kosovans consider themselves as ethnic Albanians, for starters, and they're in the situation where the likes of Serbia are not recognising them as a nation. This creates the surge in refugee numbers.
 
tommytwojags said:
Some promising proposals announced by the government today to resolve this apparently insurmountable problem

- 700 new immigration staff to deal with movement of immigrants from France and to trace illegal people-smugglers.
- 50% increase in funding to deal with asylum applications
- Present £5.5m per day spent on hotel accommodation costs to be halved with more suitable accommodation at lower cost
- Double the number of case officers to result in day or weeks asylum processing instead of current months or years
-Tackling Albanian immigrants. 1/3 of all illegal immigrants are from Albania, a prosperous safe EU applicant country. To be tackled in conjunction with Albanian authorities.
- 150,000 backlog of asylum applications to be cleared by the end of 2023

Keir Starmer questions whether this time the pledges will actually be implemented. Let's hope they are because it's a shambles at the moment.
Click to expand...
I don't doubt the sincerity of your post. However let's stick with 1/3rd of all applications suspected of being illegal appear to come from Albanian applicants.
 
The asylum system wasn’t intended for economic migrants coming from a safe country such as Albania.
It’s right then that we close down such blatant manipulation. One of the reasons the UK is seeing such huge numbers is that other countries, such as Germany, deny their applications.
The intention is to have a fast track turnaround on the Albanians as it’s almost certain the vast majority will have no valid case. Put them in a detention centre on arrival, process them rapidly, and send them back within days or weeks. Thereafter the flood will become at most a trickle, because no one with any sense will pay several thousand euros to a criminal people smuggling gang if they can see they’re going to be imminently repatriated by the UK.
As this problem starts to go away we can put more resources to genuine asylum applications. This whole recent Albanian issue is an unhelpful distraction to an already struggling asylum system.
There’s no silver bullet. The asylum issue is multi-faceted. But there are some ‘quick wins’ such as this targeting of the Albanian applications. In one fell swoop we will be able to address about a third of all applications rapidly and thereby help start to see the wood from the trees.
No one is against Albanian people. They just have no right to asylum. The sooner they get that clarity, the sooner they can get on with their lives back in their own country.
 
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It seems unclear what Labour would do, as in one breath on the Laura Keunessberg show Yvette Cooper said that immigration numbers should come down but would not answer the question about whether Labour would cancel the law on illegal immigration, instead focussing on immigration from Ukraine. Interestingly she had her usual little girl talking to the teacher look when being interviewed.

What is the answer?
 
Malced said:
The asylum system wasn’t intended for economic migrants coming from a safe country such as Albania.
It’s right then that we close down such blatant manipulation. One of the reasons the UK is seeing such huge numbers is that other countries, such as Germany, deny their applications.
The intention is to have a fast track turnaround on the Albanians as it’s almost certain the vast majority will have no valid case. Put them in a detention centre on arrival, process them rapidly, and send them back within days or weeks. Thereafter the flood will become at most a trickle, because no one with any sense will pay several thousand euros to a criminal people smuggling gang if they can see they’re going to be imminently repatriated by the UK.
As this problem starts to go away we can put more resources to genuine asylum applications. This whole recent Albanian issue is an unhelpful distraction to an already struggling asylum system.
There’s no silver bullet. The asylum issue is multi-faceted. But there are some ‘quick wins’ such as this targeting of the Albanian applications. In one fell swoop we will be able to address about a third of all applications rapidly and thereby help start to see the wood from the trees.
No one is against Albanian people. They just have no right to asylum. The sooner they get that clarity, the sooner they can get on with their lives back in their own country.
Click to expand...
At the moment, there is no way that a genuine asylum seeker from somewhere like Iran can get here without using a dinghy. Some Conservative MPs recognise this;

uk.news.yahoo.com

Suella Braverman left stumped by Tory MP’s damning question about orphan refugees

Suella Braverman has come under widespread criticism in recent weeks over her management of the Home Office.
uk.news.yahoo.com uk.news.yahoo.com

Perhaps this fact has something to do with the numbers of people using the channel as a way of gaining entry to the country?
 
ElBurroSinNombre said:
At the moment, there is no way that a genuine asylum seeker from somewhere like Iran can get here without using a dinghy. Some Conservative MPs recognise this;

uk.news.yahoo.com

Suella Braverman left stumped by Tory MP’s damning question about orphan refugees

Suella Braverman has come under widespread criticism in recent weeks over her management of the Home Office.
uk.news.yahoo.com uk.news.yahoo.com

Perhaps this fact has something to do with the numbers of people using the channel as a way of gaining entry to the country?
Click to expand...

I am sure there’s validity to that. But - my comments were specially about the Albanians.

However, as has been well reported, there’s genuine cases of folk fleeing persecution/war. And there’s those migrating for a better way of life.

The UK is a magnet for the latter. We need to disincentivise the people smuggling of economic migrants. The Rawanda initiative may well help with that.

With regards to genuine asylum seekers from Iran etc., the UK indeed must have more accessible systems. We should do our fare share for those in genuine need. We can do better for the genuine if we clamp down on the non-genuine who are effectively clogging up the system.
 
ElBurroSinNombre said:
At the moment, there is no way that a genuine asylum seeker from somewhere like Iran can get here without using a dinghy. Some Conservative MPs recognise this;

uk.news.yahoo.com

Suella Braverman left stumped by Tory MP’s damning question about orphan refugees

Suella Braverman has come under widespread criticism in recent weeks over her management of the Home Office.
uk.news.yahoo.com uk.news.yahoo.com

Perhaps this fact has something to do with the numbers of people using the channel as a way of gaining entry to the country?
Click to expand...
Ps this has nothing to do with Albanians who are free to board an aircraft and fly into Europe.
 
Malced said:
Ps this has nothing to do with Albanians who are free to board an aircraft and fly into Europe.
Click to expand...
fullfact.org

Evidence for claim that 60% of small boat arrivals are Albanian not yet published - Full Fact

The figure has been used by Priti Patel in Parliament and a number of times in the media, but it isn’t yet supported by published government statistics.
fullfact.org fullfact.org

If I could just draw your attention to this paragraph;

The government’s latest full statistical release on irregular migration, which currently only covers the period until June 2022, shows that in the first six months of 2022 people from Albania represented almost 17% of the total 12,747 people who arrived by small boat—the largest group by nationality.

So in the last full statistical release less than 1 in 5 boat crossers is from Albania. I also wonder if the recent rise in Albanian migrants has anything to do with the workforce shortages that the country currently faces in things like agriculture?

The Rwanda scheme has not made any difference to migrant numbers either as a deterrent or as a method of deportation. It seems that in most cases it is actually illegal.
 
I’m not sure what you’re getting at. We are in agreement that Albanians are coming over by boat.
The Rawanda process hasn’t been implemented yet so saying it’s not a deterrent is premature.
 
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